Re: Re: st: sthlp file not displaying correctly

Good advice. I tend to set automatic line breaks at 72 characters in
.sthlp files regardless of whether SMCL is expected to tidy up lines
within paragraphs.
Nick
On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 4:21 PM, Christopher Baum <kit.baum@bc.edu> wrote:
> <>
> Nick said
>
> . ssc inst charlist
>
> for one tool that may help if hidden characters are the problem.
>
> On 9 Nov 2012, at 14:24, Sunil Kumar <stuff.sunil@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thank you Daniel and Nick. But the problem still continues (I've tried
>> with cmd in place of cmdab). If there are any tips on
>> detecting/getting rid of hidden characters then I'd be grateful. I
>> have tried writing the sthlp file with Textedit (A Notepad-like
>> program on mac) as well as with the Stata do-file editor, but the same
>> problem results.
>>
>>
>
> Good advice--it could be nonprinting characters--but it may also be that the SMCL parser is barfing on too long a paragraph. Use, e.g., TextWrangler or BBEdit and see just how long each line is. Put in some seemingly unnecessary line breaks so that lines are not too long. I have often been bitten (using a Mac) by SMCL parsing, which seems to have some internal limit that it is not too hard to surpass, and does not give you any warning when you do.
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